Almost every fight on the table comes in a short version and a long one, and the long one keeps winning. Mamdani found that out about the anniversary. Netanyahu's finding it out about the warnings before October 7, which is a shame, because the whole record has plenty in it for him too. This close to two elections, though, just about everybody's still printing the short one.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Iran: The Pentagon readies Central Command for renewed strikes, and Israeli officials say the IDF would fly in them. See The War Today.
Lebanon: Hezbollah reportedly takes $200 million from Iran, and its men turn up again in pilot-zone villages south of Nabatieh. See The War Today.
The Houthis: Houthi missiles and drones kill three at two Saudi airports, and Riyadh reportedly asks Damascus for troops. See The War Today.
October 7: A Yedioth investigation sets Netanyahu's 55-page account beside the originals, and his then-military secretary goes on the record. See Inside Israel.
Turnout: Netanyahu and Smotrich host dozens of rabbis and open a joint turnout headquarters, and Ben-Gvir isn't invited. See Inside Israel.
The draft: Military Police go back to arresting evaders, and the Jerusalem Faction orders roadblocks in Jerusalem and Gush Dan this afternoon. See Inside Israel.
London: Britain's Jerusalem consulate closes at Sa'ar's deadline, and London shelves its threat to expel Israeli diplomats. See Israel and the World.
Jeffries: The House Democratic leader uses the anniversary to call for a Palestinian state, and two senior Democrats join in. See Israel and the World.
City Hall: Mamdani's anniversary statement gives the massacre four sentences and Israel the rest, and fellow Democrats turn on him. See Israel and the World.
Union Square: A pro-Palestinian crowd overruns a vigil that mourned both peoples, and the mourners finish behind police barricades. See Israel and the World.
Nir Oz: About 120 people sleep in the kibbutz again, and 76 homes go up at once, with 106 more planned. See Briefly Noted.
Kamal Adwan: The IDF kills two Hamas men leaving the Beit Lahia hospital and says attacks run from inside it. See Developments to Watch.
The short version is a campaign product, and it doesn't keep. Tehran doesn't need one. Nobody in the Guards is on a ballot, so when one of their advisers names the next shipping lanes they're going after, treat it as a plan. Israel's best arguments this week are the ones nobody had to edit — a third of Nir Oz sleeping at home again, and an army that says it's staying in south Lebanon as long as the digging takes.
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This week's Watchwords
Britain's Green Party made it official policy on Sunday that Zionism is a form of racism, three days short of the third anniversary of October 7. Bridget Phillipson, Labour's chair, called it shameful. All week, and not only from the Greens, the offer to Jews has been the same: we'll mourn you, we'll even protect you, as long as you leave Israel out of it.
Britain's Green Party voted on Sunday to treat Zionism "as any other form of racism," and its leader is on a ballot in London on Thursday. Delegates at the annual conference of the Green Party of England and Wales passed the motion 1,022 to 813. The policy as the party published it calls Zionism "an ethnonationalist political project" and says anti-Zionism "should not be equated with antisemitism." It also backs BDS, a full arms embargo on Israel, and "a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine." That's a map with no Israel on it. A week earlier, at a party workshop, members voted 67 to 24 against an amendment that would have protected Jewish members from racism complaints for belonging to a synagogue. Conference threw it out again on Sunday. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is standing in Thursday's Holborn and St Pancras by-election, for the London seat Keir Starmer gave up. Tony Blair did the arithmetic in The Free Press: at least two-thirds of British Jews call themselves Zionists, so the party "has, in effect, branded the majority of the country's Jews racists." What the Greens are asking of British Jews is that they give up Zionism if they want to stay in the party.
Below the line: the week's deployable language — what to say when the reporter asks, how to answer the donor worry, the claims you'll field, and the traps that lose the room. Members read the full brief.